Description

My favorite climb at Bridge Buttress.

Start off on a wet jug, move into thin tips laybacking in the buldging corner. At the top of the corner is a slam dunk move out right to a sloper then traverse one move left onto good jugs and place your first pro(17ft). The crux is next and it is pulling out of the mini-roof, a small nut in the bottom finger lock won't get in the way, place it from the good holds below. Punch it out of the crux with an airy deadpoint to a great jug where you place your biggest passive pro and a bomber chock in the jug/crack(some people even bring a big hex just for this. Fight the pump to the top and work the good hands to their end. Punch it to the anchors and don't fall off those last sloping crimps, they get sharp and strange at the very top. Bolt Anchor 10 ft short of the top (4th class with exposure)

Beware, no gear that will hold a fall until 16-19ft consider bringing and bouldering pad to protect leader for ground fall before s/he gets any gear

Location

Route is shaded. Three routes left of Jaws and two right from Chockstone. Obvious hard trad line.

Protection

see above rest of the route has bomber BIG passive pro. Sometimes people bring up a slung rock from the base to protect the big thread above the crux(dark spot at center-top of the photo). A big cow-bell(Hex) would work also. The top of the route people usually just run out, but if you want a #1-#2 would do nicely to protect the uppper section(much easier).

Well, my original plan was to get a bouldering pad to protect the fall off the bottom moves before the pro in the horizontal, but I had a friend down from Connecticut and I decided to go for it sans pad, and sent, so happy I did the climb in good style, accepting the risk and committing...

It started raining right after I sent and hasn't stopped since (2.5 days).

I'd have to agree with Darren. There is a bomber yellow TCU to protect the start moves. The thought of doing it without that gear...I guess you can if you want but it seems a bit unneccesarily dangerous.

This route is simply stellar. The opening boulder problem is a bit tricky and requires some power. It will also throw a pump on you pretty quick if you futz the gear, but once you reach the small roof you are rewarded with ridiculously secure buckets and bomber gear the rest of the way. Sent this and the Tree Route in one day, and will never forget that day. Came back a year later to repeat and blew the gear on the crux, but pushed on to the roof instead of down-climbing. Scared the crap out of me but made it through to the top anyway. To put it plainly, a ground fall from there would be bad, bad, bad. Get the TCU.

There is adequate gear to protect the opening moves and throughout the remainder of the climb. Regardless, you'd want a particularly attentive belay up to the lip of the roof. The climbing felt more akin to face climbing than crack. Being a sport-weenie making the transition to gear climbing, I felt the entire route much easier than Handsome and Well-Hung and Englishman's Crack.